Moments before former President Donald Trump took to the stage at a Montana rally this August, Celine Dion’s 1997 hit, “My Heart Will Go On,” blasted over the speakers while a clip appeared onscreen. It took less than 24 hours for the five-time Grammy winner’s team and Sony Music Entertainment Canada to issue a statement on social media saying that “in no way is this use authorized, and Celine Dion does not endorse this or any similar use.” Amid a heated political season, it’s not unusual for candidates to clash with the artists whose music they promulgate on the campaign trail. In Trump’s case, though, using a video compounded the legal complications. While political licensing for music typically needs approval from the recording artist, video playback requires approval from both the artist and composer. In theory, this fact would make it less risky for campaigners to stick with audio-only soundbites of their favorite crowd-pumping tunes. However, there are still questions around general music licensing dos and don’ts when it comes to politics, even as performing rights groups work to clarify things. For now, the intersection of artists’ rights and political campaigns remains a murky legal crossroads, at best.
Articles Posted in Privacy
What You Need to Know If You’re Using AI-Generated Voices for Your Company
Global music superstar Taylor Swift began her music career in Nashville, so we thought it fitting that on July 1, with the end of the Eras Tour in sight, the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (ELVIS) Act went into effect in Tennessee. This marks the latest front in the effort to navigate the interplay between the capability of generative AI and the Right of Publicity for music and voice artists alike.
New Report Latest to Cast Uncertainty over EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework
A new report issued in May 2024 by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), an independent thinktank, is the latest development to cause concerns over the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework (DPF), predicting that it will likely fail if challenged before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
Proposed Broad Private Right of Action in American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) Could Be a Plaintiff’s Paradise
On May 23, the House Subcommittee on Innovation, Data and Commerce advanced out of committee the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), a draft piece of legislation to establish a federal data privacy standard in the United States. The legislation now moves to the full Energy and Commerce Committee for markup. Several changes were made in the draft legislation during the markup process, but the section containing a groundbreaking set of private right of action remains unchanged.
In the Cybersecurity Law Report, colleagues Jeewon K. Serrato, Shruti Bhutani Arora and Christine Mastromonaco discuss the details of the APRA’s private right of action, the remedies available to individuals and the preemptive effect of the APRA.
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Consumer Protection Dispatch: The Latest Developments in the World of Consumer Protection (5/22/24)
(The Consumer Protection Dispatch summarizes industry news and updates on emerging issues involving a variety of consumer protection issues including, but not limited to, data and AI.)
This week’s edition includes latest developments relating to AI laws passed by Colorado, Tennessee and Utah, U.S. Senate bipartisan working group on AI, a new privacy bill from Vermont and a new privacy law from Maryland, a new Colorado law protecting neural data, and updates from the California Privacy Protection Agency.
The Brisk Evolution of Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) Rights
Developments in the world of name, image and likeness (NIL) rights continue to occur at an extremely swift pace.
Within the last two weeks, Virginia amended its existing NIL laws to significantly strengthen student-athlete NIL rights, and the NCAA adopted new NIL rules designed to allow schools to support student-athlete NIL endeavors. The NCAA also relaxed the NIL disclosure requirement adopted in January and announced it had selected Teamworks Innovations to build and maintain its NIL database.
eIDAS 2.0: Paving the Way for a Unified Digital Identity Framework in Europe
Electronic identification and trust services (eIDAS) refer to a range of services that include verifying the identity of individuals and businesses online and verifying the authenticity of electronic documents. Since 2014, such services provided in the EU have been subject to the eIDAS Regulation, which aimed to create a predictable regulatory environment across the EU and ensure that interoperability across different EU Member States. The eIDAS Regulation’s complexity, inflexibility and perceived limitations resulted in limited adoption, while the COVID-19 pandemic simultaneously fueled an increased demand for electronic identification. Consequently, the European Commission committed to revising the eIDAS Regulation to establish an EU-wide attribute-based electronic identity framework, incorporating a government-issued digital identity wallet to eliminate the dependence on commercial authentication providers.
Privacy Advocates Raise Concerns with New Mobile Driver’s Licenses
In 2021, the Department of Homeland Security started a process of adopting regulations for mobile driver’s licenses. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has since begun allowing mobile driver’s licenses as identification at airports, and several states jumped on the bandwagon, offering mobile driver’s licenses through state-sponsored apps or via Apple and Google Wallet. Now, the TSA has proposed new regulations that would waive REAL ID requirements for state-issued mobile driver’s licenses, but privacy advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warn this move may put consumers’ personal information at risk.
Greenlights, Passing Grades and Seals of Approval: Keeping Up with the Downsides of Technology
New and emerging technologies have always carried a host of potential risks to accompany their oft-blinding potential. Just as dependably, those risks have often been ignored, glossed over or just missed as public enthusiasm waxes and companies race to bring a product to market first and most effectively. Automobiles promised to get people (and products) from one place to another at life-changing speeds, but also posed a danger to life and limb while imposing a new burden on existing infrastructure. Even as technology leaps have transitioned from appliances and aircraft to computers, connectivity and large language models (LLMs), new and untested technologies continue to outpace the government and the public’s ability to moderate them. But while one can debate what constitutes an acceptable gap between the practical and ideal when it comes to regulating, mandating and evaluating the pros and cons of new technology, societies tend to generate their own methods of informing the public and attempting to rein in the more harmful aspects of the latest thing.
News of Note for the Internet-Minded (11/8/22) – AI Continues to Demonstrate Its Double-Edged Potential
In today’s News of Note, anxieties continue to grow over AI-generated art, effective cybersecurity for the high-tech era, and the impact of facial recognition and gunshot detection technology on human rights.